Acts 17:17 tells us that Paul, now in Athens, Greece, reasoned with the Jews and Gentile worshippers in the synagogue as they met on the Sabbath (our Saturday) and in the marketplace daily. Christianity is a reasonable religion that can be reasoned about. Those who reason correctly according to the law of rationality can see God through His creation. Rational belief is faith based upon evidence and reason. Creation shows the power of God, who alone explains how things came into being. Evolutionists cannot. Things did not evolve or just happen by chance, as evolutionists say. Creation shows there was a Designer; it shows intelligent design. Intelligent design demands a Being with intelligence.
Long ago, God said through the prophet Isaiah, “Come now, and let us reason together,” (Isaiah 1:18). I hope that as you read this article you will do just that, and see that what I say is just what God in His word says. God has given us the Scriptures as the accurate, reliable, definite and absolute standard in which we may rely on and trust. If we will take the Bible as our standard of authority and rule of faith we can know God’s truth, for God speaks to us through His revealed word (Matthew 22:31, 32). Satan laughs when someone accepts the “fairy tale” of evolution and rejects the Scriptures.
Athens was one of the four great cities of the Roman Empire. Its schools of human philosophy were the most illustrious in the world. Nonetheless, their philosophy took them no further religiously than idol worship. We see in Acts 17:18 that leading philosophers there wanted to hear more about what Paul was teaching. Paul began speaking to them about an altar he had seen in the city with the inscription: To The Unknown God, and told them of the One they worshipped without knowing. He proclaimed that this God was the One who made the world and everything in it (v. 24). Paul, just as Jesus did, acknowledged as truth the creation story of Genesis.
He told them that God had “made from one blood every nation” on earth and that as one of their own poets had said, ‘we are also His offspring,’ and so they were not to think that the Divine Nature is something shaped by art and man’s devising (verses 26-29, New King James Version). Paul also told them that though they did not know who God was, He was not far from each of us. Paul was proclaiming the word of God to them, instructing them as to who He is, that they might know Him. Evidence of God surrounds us in nature (Psalm 19:1; Romans 1:20), but we must go to His revealed word, the Scriptures, to learn who He is and what He requires of us.
In our next article, we will see that Paul told them that God no longer overlooks our ignorance of Him and His will and what God requires of us. In the meantime, be sure to read all the scriptures given in this article and their context.